


Oh My Love, Stand By Me

by theshipstorulethemallwrites



Series: Hold The Line [3]
Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, M/M, Multi, Sexual Tension, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 18:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10622385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipstorulethemallwrites/pseuds/theshipstorulethemallwrites
Summary: Love comes in battle and peace but it never stops healing the ache in their soulsor When the Rangers Realize They Are In Love With Each Other





	1. Sparks that Set My Heart on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> so I just saw the movie for a third time as an early birthday present and I couldn't stop thinking about how much the rangers loved each other

Trini knows that something is different about her, she’s known that since she was eleven and was playing soccer and realized that she dreamed about kissing her. She’d woken up in a cold sweat and brushed it off, pretended like it was only because the boy she’d been crushing on at school hadn’t looked her way in weeks. It wasn’t until her first year of high school, her last in the state that she’d accepted that she wanted girls. That she wanted to have sex, date, do all the things she wanted to do with boys, just with girls. In her desperation, her loneliness, her fear she’d turned to the internet but learned that even there she couldn’t like both. So even though bringing girls home caused fights, caused friction with her mom especially, the internet had her back. These people she’d never met gave her shelter in her time of need and she couldn’t just come out and label herself, the way everyone wanted her too. She didn’t even know what she wanted, until _her_ team that is. 

Until she’d spent hours training with them and laughing with them and simply being with them, even with the duty and the danger hanging over their heads. Until one day she’s sitting with Kim and slowly realizes that somewhere along the line she’s started having a crush on her fellow ranger. She makes her excuses to leave and goes for a walk home, for the first time in ages she refuses to use her ranger powers. Walking with headphones always cleared her head before and even though this is a much worse situation she doesn’t see why that should stop. She ends up in front of Jason’s house, accidently but she hears a little girl’s laugh and sees Jason through the glinting light chasing his sister around the house. She turns back, turning up her music and sighing as she thinks back to just how many times she’s crushed on a cheerleader. It’s been at least four different girls, if not more, hell the first girl she’d ever dreamed about kissing had been a cheerleader. It was always the same awful feeling that only got worse the more Trini saw them but couldn’t touch them. A sinking pit inside her stomach and an pang in her heart and oh _fuck_ , she doesn’t want this with Kim. She doesn’t want to both push her away and hold her closer at the same time, the paradox of what being loved by Trini is. But she doesn’t know if what she felt for all the others, the others who feel like training wheels, was even love because Kim, Kim feels like more. Kim smiles at her and the cracks in heart from being left alone, from being told how to be, start to heal but then again it’s the same way she feels with Billy sits with her, when Zack calls her Crazy Girl with that look in his eyes, when Jason squeezes her shoulder after she’s mastered a move. 

But she can’t, she’s already such a mess, such a lost wandering wasteland, she already hears enough from her parents how she’s a hurricane. She knows that they don’t mean it in a good way. They mean it in that she’s uncontrollable and destructive and she only leaves pain in her wake. She can’t do that to her team, to her friends, she can’t, _won’t_ , fall in love with any of them. 

Especially Kim. 

Kim and Jason had claimed each other long before they’d even met the others, become rangers. There’s a familiarity in the way they touch, the heat in their eyes that tells Trini that they’ve been involved before. She doesn’t know why the thought of them sends spikes of heat down her spine as much as it infuriates her. It shouldn’t, she holds no claims to them and they hold no claim to her. But even logic can’t stop her from wanting. 

And it only gets worse from there. Kim is bad enough, Kim is a reminder of every time she’d been an idiot and though she could actually have who she wanted. Kim is beautiful and brilliant and shines so bright that sometimes Trini wants to cover her eyes, it’s easy to fall in love with Kimberly Hart. It’s so utterly easy that she doesn’t realize that she dreams of her until she’s halfway down on the pit of devastation. It’s a familiar feeling yet different somehow, like there’s somehow a chance with this one. But Trini has thought that before, Trini has chased before, she’d been desperate before and it has cost more than just friends, it has slowly and painfully torn her heart to shreds. There aren’t many pieces left and no matter how much she felt for Kim, she refuses to let her heart be broken anymore. 

Ultimately though, the idea that Trini has a say in the matter is absolutely bullshit. Now she had been forced to understand why people say that you only understand what it was like to love someone when you lose them. Because when Rita threatens Zack, almost killing the boy, no man, who had forced her to open up, her heart got caught in her throat and she can barely contain her screams or her tears. The effort to maintain her composure is lost when Rita shoves Billy underwater, forcing them to watch as he dies. And Trini feels as though her heart has been crushed and turned to dust in front of her greatest enemy as Rita walks away and they fall to the ground. It’s rush and she’s shoved out of the way by Kim who desperately searches for a pulse, sobbing when she doesn’t find one. Trini knows that she’s on the outskirts, Jason clutching Zack’s soaked shirt without even noticing he’s doing so, Kim laying atop Billy sobbing and she feels like she’s watching her entire world collapse and burn in front of her eyes. Watching as a black hole is being created, as the stars she sees in her team die before her tearful gaze. They pick him up and carry him back, not home. They don’t even know what home really is but Trini thinks that for Billy it ~~was~~ , is, _is_ them. And they aren’t complete without the blue genius who forced them into becoming their best selves. As they walk up the mountain, Trini realizes that she’s never truly be home again, something, someone, will always be missing. And holding his body, taking him back to the place where she started falling, is when Trini realizes that she’s in love with Billy. She never got to tell him, to thank him even. And she’s walking to the Wall, Zordon who lost all of his team but who can’t understand and she wants to scream for hours at the unfairness of it all. She’s the one who caused this, she’s the one who let Rita get to her, she’s the one who killed Billy. 

But then Jason, idiot, self sacrificing, martyring Jason screams at Zordon to bring Billy back and then turns to them and has the nerve to apologize for something she did. 

“He _loved_ us. He loved being a ranger.” Jason says, voice nearly breaking as he stares at Billy’s body with a look of utter despair. And Trini relates and then he says the thing that puts her on the path to hell, because she’s now in love with two or is it three, dammit Billy still counts, people at once. He says he’s sacrifice himself for the rest of them and Trini wants to scream because she can’t lose her, she refuses to lose another person and he had to go and say that. Saying that means she will lose him, eventually, sooner than she’d like. She should’ve prevented this, she should’ve stopped these fractures that both seem to bind and break them. Because Jason is shaking in a way that only someone like her, someone who is always using a mask, would recognize. Then Zack speaks and they all echo him because yes, Trini knows that she would give her life for any of the people standing in this silent ship in a heartbeat. Jason is glorious in his rage but in his sorrow and desperation he becomes beautiful and that’s a terrible thing, to realize that you love someone else’s brokenness because you see echoes of yourself. But that’s when she figures it out, when he goes to bat for them, when he becomes the leader the rest of the town already believed he was. When Jason truly becomes who he is meant to be and it’s just utterly wonderful. 

And then the impossible becomes possible and Billy comes back and Trini can’t help but touch him, trace his face in her hands and she really, desperately, wants to take his face in her hands and kiss him. She wants to kiss them all, she wants to give them all she can give them because they deserve more than just her. That’s the only thing she’s thinking off when they step on the platforms, about how much she loves them. And then they morph and all Trini can feel is the seemingly endless amounts of love and strength and power that reverberate around her soul from each of her teammates. Fighting with them, kicking ass and taking names and showing off the depth of the trust they have for each other, is the best feeling in the world and Trini never wants it to end. 

But life and the universe and fate hates her for simply trying to live in the world, not even trying to save it. It would turn on her eventually and Goldar starts pushing them into the pit. The pit that holds the key to life but also is the means of their death. She keeps firing, keeps pushing, tries to stand her ground but he’s just too strong and she wants to grab the others, to hold them as them and not the endless feedback loop of her Zord burning. Kim falters, screaming as Goldar pushes her wings together. Billy, who only minutes ago, though it feels like hours, came back from the dead. She sees Goldar crash his and Jason’s zords together and sees the way he’s shaking, trying to keep himself awake. But everything she feels pales in comparison as she watches as Zack faints from the heat. The past 24 hours have literally destroyed the last vestiges of her shattered heart and now, losing Zack, losing the man she thinks she’s been falling for the moment she saw him sitting on the train all those weeks ago, she falls. She can barely hear Billy thanking them, hear Kim’s last request as they fall. She just wishes they had more time, she wishes she could manage to speak the words her heart is screaming at her to say but her mouth won’t move and her heart seems to have stopped beating. 

She lets out a joyous laugh as they come flying out of the pit, a massive something that reformed them into a giant unit. After today, she really shouldn’t have given up on the others, on their faith, their belief and their love for each other and for her. They fight and it’s over quicker than she expects, using the moves they learned and working together as though they’d known each other for years and not just days. She hears them shouting, bracing themselves and Jason ordering Rita to stand down and suddenly there’s something flying towards her. It feels like a bug, tiny and insignificant yet capable of causing great fear, and so she acts on instinct and backhands Rita into the sky. Jason, being an absolute dork, but one she’s in love with, starts doing terribly white boy dance moves. 

It takes ages for them to move forward, for them to rebuild themselves and the town, weekend detentions spend clearing roads and repainting storefronts. It takes less for Trini’s feelings to become more than what she thought they could be. She’d thought it was just because she had almost lost all of them, just because she was desperate and shattered but no, they kept growing and growing until it was nearly unbearable. Thankfully, it’s Zack, trusted, tender, tremendous, Zack who says something. Zack who confesses and of course, it’s Jason who acts, who kisses them and it’s Billy who forces them to talk and Kim who keeps them grounded. Jason who says “I love you” like it’s easy rolling of the tongue, like it’s as simple as breathing.

But for Trini, there’s a desperation in the way people say “I love you” so she keeps her feelings to herself, she says them in kisses and in touches but not in words. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason falls before the Power even takes hold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the movie came out on dvd and I watched the delated scenes and I had way too many Jason feels so I had to finish writing this.

Jason sits on his bed, looking out at the rest of the town, waiting for the rest of his team, for the ones who hold all of his heart. He knows that he said I love you to the team first, he knows that Trini will most likely say it last, she’s terrified about losing them and he gets that. Because he can taste her saying the words every time she kisses him, see the words every time she and Kim start looking at each other like they can’t believe the other is real, hear the words every time she laughs with Zack over an inside joke and he knows that when she touches Billy like he’s something precious, that is what she’s trying to convey. He knows why he said it earliest, far earlier than even he had anticipated. It’s because he fell for them all long before they came together as Rangers, long before they won their first battle. His mom has always warned him that his heart is both his greatest weakness and his strength and he thanks the universe everyday for giving him the team. Because now he’s got them for that. He has them to tamper him down from the way his heart almost acts an inferno, consuming everything around him. He has them to remind him to use his head, to not be so completely reckless. They’re the only way he’ll manage to survive everything that’s coming. And he can’t help but fall a little more in love with them every time he hears them say his name.

Even though he’s known Trini for the shortest amount of time, a few months in comparison to several years, he found that he started falling for her before they met at the cliff that night. Hell, he started falling for her before he even really knew her name. Because she saw a side of him that no one else ever did. It’s cliche as fuck and it makes him possibly the cheesiest guy in the multiverse and Trini will never ever know. But he started falling for her when he saw at the park in the summer with her brothers when he was with Katie. He was very tempted to see if this beautiful girl wanted to play a game of one on one with the winnings being a date. He was a dick at the time he first met her, he hadn’t quite grown out of the football persona that the town and his friends desperately wanted to believe was the true him. Taking off a mask is a lot harder than putting it on after all.

But yeah, he fell for the way Trini’s eyes sparkled when her brothers managed to score against her. The way she couched them but she never went easy on them, the way whenever he got close enough to hear her voice, he could hear her sarcastic comments. He fell for the way she easily loved her family, the way until she got a ball in her hands she seemed guarded. He wanted to be the one to break down those walls. He still does.

And for weeks, he couldn’t get her out of his head. It’s like his heart was a magnet pulling him closer to the ones that utterly hold his heart. And once they became Rangers, once he found out more about her, once he saw her be vulnerable at the campfire, he fell even deeper. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t always the one causing her to let some of those walls down, because she was letting him see it.

If Trini was like a rainstorm, the first drop made him shiver but the path was slow, Kim was a lightening bolt, one strike and he was never the same. Or in the case, it was one kiss. It was one burning look that set his entire body aflame and his heart aflutter. He was utterly lost to the hurricane that was a girl named Kimberly Hart.

He had known Kim since they were kids, practically the whole lives, they had always just missed each other. It was as though they were on the opposite sides of the same orbit, catching glimpses of each other but never touching. That was possibly why it was such a life changing moment, kissing her at that party. It wasn’t romantic, at all. They had both just made to varsity cheer and football and the teams found any excuse to throw at party. And they’d been dancing around each other all night. He had always found Kim beautiful, ever since they were eight and they played AYSO soccer right next to each other. So when they’d started playing 7 minutes in heaven, both captains had unceremoniously shoved them both in a closet, locked the door and left them to it. That was the first time he had ever shared more than a few words with her and it was one of the most awkward situation he’d been in at that point. They’d shared a long glance, Jason looking away first and he hates that this could ever get out, but Kim had been the one to break the tension, Kim had been the one to lean in and kiss him. And it wasn’t his first kiss, but it was the first one that mattered. In the moment he knew he wanted to make it good, he wanted to make her think of him sometimes. He wanted to fucking _haunt_ her dreams the way she haunted his. So he put everything he had into the kiss and when they pulled apart to breath, she was the one chasing his lips. They had kissed for what felt like centuries yet also felt like a millisecond. His hands had somehow ended up in her hair, they ended up on the ground, against the door with Kim sitting in his lap. It was a powerful feeling but he couldn’t hide that he was also just as affected. And no one was coming to get them so he wrapped a hand around her neck and pulled her down for another kiss, and another and another and _another_. And then the door opened and the two of them literally fell out of the closet, blushing fiercely. Jason had figured that she wanted nothing to do with him after that, that they’d go back to being strangers. A stranger who haunted his dream, a stranger where he knew exactly what she sounded like when she turned on, a stranger who kissed him like she wanted to take him apart and then piece him back together. She still kisses the exact same way, the soul searching type of kiss that remakes him each time they need to breath.

But a stranger just the same. But fate, desire, circumstance, whatever governs his life had other plans. And instead they fell into each other’s beds and she dropped into his heart and for a few months he was deliriously happy. But then she ended it and for the first time he learned what heartbreak felt like. Being Rangers, spending so much time around her, with her, again was the worst type of torture. Because unlike the others, he knew exactly what she felt like, what she sounded like, what she tasted like, the dreams weren’t just dreams. It was made worse because of the way she trusted him, the way she trusted all of them, and it made him feel the worst kind of dirty for wanting her the way he did, the way he had her before the world let him become an endless series of fuckups.

He had fallen for Billy long before the world had set him on the path to make mistakes. He had fallen for Billy before he even understood what love was, what it meant. Billy had entered his heart the way child learns the sunset is awe inspiring, the minute it was seen, it never left. It wasn’t always something that was at the forefront, but every time he saw he saw Billy, he found himself falling just a little more in love, finding something a little more rare and wonderful.

He started falling for Billy the first time they’d met, in first grade. Jason has moved to Angel Grove a week into school and the only seat open was next to Billy. In the way kids do, they immediately became friends. The act of being next to each other for nearly every class meant that they had to learn some things about each but becoming friends happened because the second thing Jason noticed about Billy, the first was that he was smart, was that he had Spiderman comic tucked into his backup, the cover just peeking out. They had bonded over comics the way kids do and Billy had gifted Jason the first comic that the red ranger ever called his own. His parents were savers, the Scotts had never been wealthy enough that something that could be got for free at the library a few weeks later would be gotten new the minute it came out. The moment Billy had walked into school and handed him a Captain America comic and told Jason that it was his, was the first time that someone other than his family got a piece of his heart.

And he hadn’t realized it, that Billy was the first person to have the bits of his heart he gave away, until Billy died at the docks. Until the man that he spent weeks falling for even more, stopped breathing and there was nothing he could do. While he carried Billy back to the Command Center, back to their home, a montage of all their time together flashed through his mind and the moment that little Jason’s hand touched little Billy’s atop that Captain America comic stuck out. It was the first and last thing he saw as he held Billy’s cold body in shaking hands. And then Billy came back and Billy let him hug him, leaning in into like it was a lifeline, and the colors of the world suddenly seemed a little brighter.

Zack had taken the longest amount of time, it had been slow, like the start of a bonfire. Something that takes breath and the smallest nudges to become a reality and takes a watchfulness to truly become breathtaking. Zack had been his first crush on a guy. The other boy had moved to Angel Grove in eighth grade and Jason had found himself captivated, utterly enchanted. But other than finding Zack physically attractive, they didn’t really see each other and it remind an attraction.

But, it become something greater when they were placed on the same line for football during P.E in ninth grade and there had been an incredible ease and rightness to the way they played together. It was as though Zack was anticipating his moves before Jason even made them and they had ended up practicing after school for a few weeks. One day, Zack simply stopped showing up. Jason had been angry, of course he was. In ninth grade, everyone thought the world revolved around them. But he had expected to see Zack within the next few days in gym class, he even had a whole speech in his head. But Zack hadn’t just stopped showing up for after school stuff, he had stopped showing up all together. Now, Jason knows that that was when his mom got sick, that Zack had found himself a job that hired uderage teens and worked during the day instead of going to school. By the time the new semester rolled around, Jason had almost forgotten about Zack. That was until he saw him walking to a class, alone in a large leather jacket with headphones on. He had almost approached him, almost tried to reach out but one of his new teammates pulled his attention away. But there was a way that he noticed Zack, payed attention the man who had so captivated him for over a year. He didn’t really know what it meant, why it mattered to him that Zack kept going to school.

Not until they become rangers, not until he realized that as much as much as he wanted to kill the black ranger, for not listening to him, for treating their survival as a joke, for being the second most aggravating person he’d ever met, he also wanted to kiss him, for bringing them lightness, for challenging him, for being the second most beautiful person he’d ever met. He wanted Zack in every way he could want a person. And it had sucked to realize that the crush that he had had when he was 14 never went away, that it had only grown over the next four years. That somewhere along the way, he’d fallen in love with Zack.

He loves them, some part of him has always belonged to them and that’s why it’s so easy. It’s the easiest thing he’s ever done, to tell them with words and touches and kisses that he’s in love with them. He never thought something would feel more right than being a ranger but somehow being with them is. Because he gets to share comics with Billy, he gets to kiss Kim, he gets to watch Trini’s eyes light up and he gets to play with Zack, he gets all the pieces that he first fell for. Not only that, he gets _more_.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like it. Please let me know. I love these kids a lot.
> 
> Part three of my Poly Rangers verse
> 
> title comes from Stand by Me by Bootstraps 
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://the-ships-to-rule-them-all.tumblr.com)


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